Colos Short and Curlies

Like he did in the summer when he valued the club at £100m?

What will he do, just write himself a cheque when he fancies the money back? Considering the famous club insider (who everybody is now taking his word as gospel) said when mentioning the 20m that it was an interest free loan. Loan implies he'll be getting it back one way or another. No it doesnt Loan implies that the club owes him the money. Whether or not they ever do is something completely different

So many holes..... The only point which hasn't been done to death is the issue re loans and getting the money back. That worked well for every bank who has lent money on property in the last decade or so hasn't it

Not entirley true, given the amount of money he had to put in toward's the debt, which was built up by the previous chairman/board. While a lot of that is his own fault for not carrying out due diligence before buying the club, perhaps if he hadn't had to plough as much in towards the debt, then he may have been prepared to spend more on the playing side. But should he be expected to run/fund the club and keep buying players out of his own 'deep pockets'? That's exactly what you accept when you buy 100% of a football club.....unless you can run it such that revenue covers costs...which he (like Shepherd) has not been able to do. We signed Nolan and Ryan Taylor January 09, didn't we?. Not saying it was the answer and/or enough (it clearly wasn't), but he did give JFK the money to spend. I'm not pro-Ashley, but I can understand (to a degree) why he isn't spending all of his own money on players each transfer window, while also (allegedly) putting money into keeping the club running. Shepherd never put any of his own money in beyond his intial investment in '92, but because Ashley is a Multi-Millionaire (was a billionaire), he is seemingly expected to continuously. There is clearly some kind of plan to get the club running off it own back again (reducing wages, etc), which is taking time, and hopefully promotion can/will help that as well, with the additional monies that will come with it. We made around £8 million during that transfer window. We weakend our squad when we should've been looking to improve. The fact of the matter is Ashley could've done what you've highlighted (running the club on a sensible budget, reducing wages etc.) without us getting relegated. Maybe JK had identified Nolan and Taylor as the players he needed and felt that Harper was solid enough to replace Shay. Man Utd made a huge profit last summer on transfers, Fergie seems happy enough with the dealings though. Pretty sure Arsenal made a profit too, they are stronger now than last season. Net profit/loss is a stupid number to use, you could overspend on 2 players to have a net overspend and actually weaken the team or get 2 on the cheap and improve the team. Its the quality of player (managers choice) that matters not the £ notes

Fuck off, Derek. Would you rather be in our position right now or Portsmouths? Ours, clearly. Where did that come from anyway? Sorry, picked any random post to quote. The point is though that the way we were headed under Fred, we could quite easily be in Portsmouth's position. We were losing money hand over fist and were running out of options to generate funds. It was basically outside investment or turn off the tap. I'm sure that 2 years ago no Portsmouth fan envisaged this season, but its happenede - and quickly too. Ashley has made some big mistakes - no one can deny that with a straight face, but its very possible that he has had to put together a plan which would turn the company and club around after a few years of pain - I'm sure that relegation wasn't part of this, but I'di take one season in the fizzy pop league to oblivion. It happens all the time in corporate entities, a MD comes in and makes unpopular decisions for the long term good of all. Its only in hindsight that this is recognised, and often only once the big bad wolf has left I don't doubt our financial situation under Shepherd was less than sound, I just haven't seen anything to suggest Mike Ashley & Derek Llambias have any sort of 'plan' to take us to the top. The only thing we do know Ashley has is deep pockets which he isn't particularly keen to put his hand in unless he absolutely has to. You have to plough the field before you sow the seeds

Fuck off, Derek. Would you rather be in our position right now or Portsmouths? Ours, clearly. Where did that come from anyway? Sorry, picked any random post to quote. The point is though that the way we were headed under Fred, we could quite easily be in Portsmouth's position. We were losing money hand over fist and were running out of options to generate funds. It was basically outside investment or turn off the tap. I'm sure that 2 years ago no Portsmouth fan envisaged this season, but its happenede - and quickly too. Ashley has made some big mistakes - no one can deny that with a straight face, but its very possible that he has had to put together a plan which would turn the company and club around after a few years of pain - I'm sure that relegation wasn't part of this, but I'di take one season in the fizzy pop league to oblivion. It happens all the time in corporate entities, a MD comes in and makes unpopular decisions for the long term good of all. Its only in hindsight that this is recognised, and often only once the big bad wolf has left

Nope. Fred wasn't an idiot. The facts on that beg to differ!

Fuck off, Derek. Would you rather be in our position right now or Portsmouths?

Could anyone seriously have expected Fred to have put £20m of his own money into Newcastle in any one year?

Well Geremi was paid similar, if not more and couldn't run. Never heard any stories of his unprofessionalism Geremi is 47, not 27. Point is Geremi was in no way unprofessional but very slow and heavy legged, genetics if you will. You said that Nolan's condition was 100%, undisputed, unequivicolly due to his unprofessionalism and that there was no other explanation. I proved that a persons fitness can be determined by factors outside of professionalism

Well Geremi was paid similar, if not more and couldn't run. Never heard any stories of his unprofessionalism

From what I can deduce from whats been said/gone on at the club Ashley has come in to a failing business (his fault for not doing due diligence) and has had to make some pretty hard hitting decisions in order to put it back on its feet. People who do this are never popular (just look at whats gone on at the Royal Mail and British Airways), but sometimes it is necessary. Yes he has made some huge mistakes - the treatment of KK being the obvious one, but most of the decisions have come from a need to change and not through malice. Bad choices are not necessarly wicked choices. In some ways it is a shame that Ashley will never see if his decisions have worked for the long term, and in some ways getting a new owner in who will have to implement more changes could do more short term damage than good at present

Mike Ashley signed the contracts of EVERY player at the club so it's totally his fault. Would be interesting to find out how he would have been treated if he'd shipped out four or five more of our best players to reduce the losses to £10m a season. I suspect the headlines would be 'NUFC losing £250k a week!!!' and also 'Mike Ashley asset stripping c***'. Something along those lines. The headlines should just be "Ashley spouts more bollocks". The papers should report our profit and loss when the accounts are released and only then. Thecertainly shouldn't run a headline about us losing half a million every week as a statement of fact, when the source is the same people to have admitted in court that misleading fans and the media is what they do. On the other hand, as quayside has already pointed out upthread, whenever they have made a statement about the finances, it has proved, on later examination of the accounts, to be true. Really? Back in 2008 they were contradicting themselves all over the shop. "This club had £100million-worth of debt which has now been cleared" "I then poured another £110 million into the club not to pay off the debt but just to reduce it. The club is still in debt. Even worse than that, the club still owes millions of pounds in transfer fees." "Financially we're very sound. We don't owe a bean as far as the club are concerned" Then the accounts showed Uniteds debt was £22.6m. Selective choice of quotes there, to make it sound like Ashley claimed he had loaned £210m when he never said any such thing. The facts were that he did stick in £100 million and Llambias said that a further £10 million had been stuck in post June 2008, which should show up in the 2009 accounts, making £110 in total. And the club didn't owe a bean to anyone external at that stage. And the accounts did not show a debt of £22.6m, where did you get that from Note 14 in the 2008 accounts says the " loan of £100 million from Mr MJW Ashley is unsecured. The loan agreement is that interest can be charged at a rate of LIBOR + 0.5%, however no interest has been charged in the year to 30 June 2008." I never intended that to come across as " he said £210m". The first quote said £100m had cleared all the debt. The second unrelated quote said £110m hadn't been enough to clear the debt. Two contradicting stories that show, on finances, like everything else, they make it up as they go along. The £22.6m figure came from this report on the accounts... http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2009/01/23/newcastle-united-club-accounts-reveal-state-of-play-61634-22758691/ So it hasn't occurred to you that a business making losses needs funding as it goes along. The £100 million did clear the external debt at that time but as the club lost more money further funds were needed to bale it out. And the article quite clearly states that the figure of £22.6m is the net current liabilities. Ashley's loan does not form part of that figure because he was not going to call it in within a period of 12 months. I fully understand that not everyone understands this stuff but drawing sweeping conclusions based on minimal knowledge is a shyte idea tbh. I appreciate that and I'm grateful to people like you who point out mistakes of a lay person like me. It had occured to me that more than £10m of further debt could have accrued in the 4 months between the statements, but even if it had, I thought the point stood. Wouldn't you agree the claim that we were debt free in May 2008 was a season ticket pushing distortion of the facts at best, just on the basis of the outstanding transfer liabilities they knew existed and later used as evidence of crushing debt? It may be that because I'm an accountant I define debt differently than other people, but to me debt should be seen as required repayments on things such as loans and things bought on tick (lets say player transfers for a football club). Every month a club will have outstanding payments for regular purchases and things like VAT/PAYE/NI, these will be paid every month but there is a lag between then cost being incurred and the payment being made - like if you buy on a credit card. If you pay your credit card bill off in full every month then to me it is not debt, its only when you let it build up that it becomes debt. Similarly if you pay off your creditors each month then its not debt. Remember the accounts show the position as a snapshot at a given point in time, go forward one week and all of these payments may have been made. Hence, I don't think that there is an inconsistency in being debt free in September and having current liabilities of £23m in June or whenever

Mike Ashley signed the contracts of EVERY player at the club so it's totally his fault. Would be interesting to find out how he would have been treated if he'd shipped out four or five more of our best players to reduce the losses to £10m a season. I suspect the headlines would be 'NUFC losing £250k a week!!!' and also 'Mike Ashley asset stripping c***'. Something along those lines. The headlines should just be "Ashley spouts more bollocks". The papers should report our profit and loss when the accounts are released and only then. Thecertainly shouldn't run a headline about us losing half a million every week as a statement of fact, when the source is the same people to have admitted in court that misleading fans and the media is what they do. On the other hand, as quayside has already pointed out upthread, whenever they have made a statement about the finances, it has proved, on later examination of the accounts, to be true. Really? Back in 2008 they were contradicting themselves all over the shop. "This club had £100million-worth of debt which has now been cleared" "I then poured another £110 million into the club not to pay off the debt but just to reduce it. The club is still in debt. Even worse than that, the club still owes millions of pounds in transfer fees." "Financially we're very sound. We don't owe a bean as far as the club are concerned" Then the accounts showed Uniteds debt was £22.6m. Selective choice of quotes there, to make it sound like Ashley claimed he had loaned £210m when he never said any such thing. The facts were that he did stick in £100 million and Llambias said that a further £10 million had been stuck in post June 2008, which should show up in the 2009 accounts, making £110 in total. And the club didn't owe a bean to anyone external at that stage. And the accounts did not show a debt of £22.6m, where did you get that from Note 14 in the 2008 accounts says the " loan of £100 million from Mr MJW Ashley is unsecured. The loan agreement is that interest can be charged at a rate of LIBOR + 0.5%, however no interest has been charged in the year to 30 June 2008." I never intended that to come across as " he said £210m". The first quote said £100m had cleared all the debt. The second unrelated quote said £110m hadn't been enough to clear the debt. Two contradicting stories that show, on finances, like everything else, they make it up as they go along. The £22.6m figure came from this report on the accounts... http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2009/01/23/newcastle-united-club-accounts-reveal-state-of-play-61634-22758691/ Overdraft, Payroll taxes, amounts due on transfer fees, amounts owed to other creidtors for eg food offset by amounts owed to the club - money due from transfers, television money etc. The £22.6 million does not mean that the club had any further loans other than that to Ashley

Its just the same story that has been consistent all year. Ashley has put in £20m to keep the club running, which is roughly £500,000 a week. It has always been claimed that this amount was needed, so there should be no surprises in it

They should tell them to f*** off tbh. The transfer window has only just closed. Whatever problems they have servicing their debts now will have existed 3 weeks ago when the window was still open. nah, that would be illegal, as any business should be allowed to sell their asset's to keep themselves afloat tbh How would it be illegal? The current transfer window gig was agreed after Bosman & was signed up by FIFA, UEFA & EU. no the bosman ruling happned 15 years ago, the transfer window is only 8 years old. because portsmouth are a business, businesses are allowed to sell their asset's if their is a requirement to do so Oh dear, I did say "after Bosman" because the transfer window is widely accepted by most as being something that happened because of the Bosman case because that is when the EU started looking at the LEGALITY of the transfer system, which resulted in FIFA, UEFA & the EU legally agreeing to this system. no you said they happened at the sametime, they didn't He quite clearly says after

Funny, I was just saying on Saturday that I generally think Colo would cope better in midfield than any of Nolan, Butt or Smith. Obviously it's never gonna happen because it's vital we have him at CB. I've thought it all season. He is the best passer of the ball in our team, without a doubt. When Taylor is back and playing alongside Williamson, I'd love to see what Colo could do at DM. He has played at DM a considerable amount of times for Depor, Milan saw him as the long-term replacement for Costacurta (a DM). Sure, it's a sign of desperate times that I'm suggesting we use our best defender this season as a playmaker, but I think an effective passer of the ball is exactly what we need in the centre of the park, whilst still providing defensive cover. Just imagine next season, it could be Colo vs Felleni in the middle of the park

So in 93 we had a squad good enough for promotion but not the premier league and therefore had an overhaul in the summer. In 2010 we have a squad (theoretically) good enough for promotion but not the premier league. Who's to say we wont do the same again? I'd stick my neck out and say that our keepers are good enough, at least 3 of the first choice back 4 are strong enough with one good sub centre half and Simpson who wouldn't look out of his depth in the top flight (not saying he is top drawer, but good enough for the first season back up. Jonas and Routledge are good enough wingers and Barton should be able to hold his own in the middle if fit (of course). That leaves one first choice centre mid, two strikers and then squad padding - should be enough to having a fighting chance of staying up and then looking to consolidate. We're not going to finish in the top 6 next season, but it has always been an anomoly when a promoted team does, and even more so now with the money at City, Spurs, Villa.

Is anyone bringing an inflatable sheep with them to the game? The swansea lot may struggle to play with erections for 90 minutes (c/o Rob Brydon)

I'd rather see him pay the amounts owed twice, plus a fine and then some community service. The Treasury needs all the money they can get, banging him up benefits no-one

Hope he has got a top top lawyer. Saying that, he probably likes the look of the Revenues lawyer, but obviously that lawyer doesn't belong to him so he wouldn't dream of talking about it in public, but would be quite fine in talking about not beig comfortabel talking about it

Stoke, Burnley, Wolves, Villa, Fulham & Man City (though City's owners would probably just bugger off) would probably do OK if they suddenly lost the Premiership cash, everyone else would be looking at administration. Wigan have massive debts, Hull have a huge wage bill, etc. If their income dropped £25m+ for even a single season their financiers would be panicking. Pretty sure that Man U, Chelsea, Sunderland would survive a season outside of the Premier League Man Utd would struggle badly without CL revenue as it is, take away £25m+ Champion's League money and £25m+ Premiership money and they'd only be able to survive by offloading their entire team. Chelsea might be OK, but that's mainly because they've got a rich owner, if he leaves they're fucked no matter what league they're in. Sunderland owed £69m as of July 2008, again they've got financial backing but would they hang around if they weren't in the Premiership? So Man City have a rich owner so would be Ok, but you didn't consider Sunderland and Chelsea who are in the same situation? Juventus coped fine with a seaosn out of the big time, if it was a one off blip then Man Utd would be fine

Stoke, Burnley, Wolves, Villa, Fulham & Man City (though City's owners would probably just bugger off) would probably do OK if they suddenly lost the Premiership cash, everyone else would be looking at administration. Wigan have massive debts, Hull have a huge wage bill, etc. If their income dropped £25m+ for even a single season their financiers would be panicking. Pretty sure that Man U, Chelsea, Sunderland would survive a season outside of the Premier League

Adriano

Yeah get him regular football Somewhere at the top of League 1 would do nicely. loan swap for Beckford